The ups and downs of trying to accumulate a seven-figure net worth on a five-figure salary, loose weight, get fit, and do a post-grad course while working full-time... oh, and train for air pistol competitions ;)

Sunday, 25 July 2010

Is Dotster the worst discount domain name registrar in the universe?

I originally started this blog using blogger, then decided to register the domain name using Dotster and setting up Blogger to utilise the 'custom domain' enoughwealth.com. After a bit of fiddling with settings in my Blogger dashboard and paying extra for DNS settings management with Dotster, I got the http://enoughwealth.com URL to work OK (ie. displaying my blogger content), but the 'www' version (ie. http://www.enoughwealth.com) never worked. I used the Dotster 'help' form to send details of my problem last week, and got the following response back via email:

"Dear Valued Dotster Customer

Dotster is committed to supporting our customers in a professional and timely manner. This is to notify you that your email has not been received. To submit your request, please use the web submission form below to contact Customer Service..."

WTF? If they didn't receive my first email (which was generated by filling in the web submission form) how were they able to respond to the email address I had provided in my help request? This seems extremely odd - either the web form didn't send through the information I had provided about my issue, or else this is their customer service way of shifting my help request into the 'too hard' basket and hope it just goes away.

Any way you look at it, this is a pretty poor way to handle a customer's request for help.

Just another reason to think about going through the hassle of transferring my domain name registration to another discount provider such as GoDaddy - my experience with them has been much better, and they charge less as well!

2 comments:

basically you need:1. Create a CNAME record:www.enoughwealth.com to associate www version domain with this value: ghs.google.com.

2. then create 4 A records for domain without "www" i.e. enoughwealth.comwith following IP:216.239.32.21216.239.34.21216.239.36.21216.239.38.21

After you done these two steps, you primary domain of your blog will be www.enoughwealth.comwhen people type in enoughwealth.com (i.e. without www), google will redirect them to www version of your domain i.e. www.enoughwealth.com

I'd tried that, but the 4 A records IP addresses specified by the blogger help are different from what the Dotster DNS management instructions specify.

Also, aside from not fixing the problem when I setup the CNAME record in Dotster per the blogger instructions, it resulted in an error message in the Dotster DNS management page (along the lines of cannot use a CNAME record when you have URL forwarding enabled).

Hence I sent a copy of the blogger instructions in my help request to Dotster (via their help form) -- the problem is the 'help' I got back from Dotster ;)

While I can understand Dotster not wanting to spend customer service time ($$$s) on an account that only has one domain registered with them (around $20 per revenue), they should still provide support. After all, they are charging me extra for URL forwarding and DNS management facility on the account.

Site Meter Stats

About Me

The purpose of this web site is educational and commercial. Any investment ideas or financial information that you view on this site should be talked over with your licensed legal, financial, insurance, or investment advisor prior to executing any transactions.
This site does not give investment advice in any form. I am not a Financial Planner.